HOPKINS COUNTY, KY (4/1/13) – Wednesday, March 27, 2013, the Lions Club held a luncheon for Congressman Ed Whitfield to discuss our current coal issues here in America.

When we had the financial crisis in America and when Barack Obama became President, his administration, soon after the first election, wanted to transform the way America received its energy, particularly the electricity side. “When the stimulus bill passed, they spent billions of dollars funding money to unproven technologies in the area of the green energy. Their most famous project, they spent $538 million dollars of taxpayers money to a company in Oklahoma ran by George Kaiser, who is one of the wealthiest men in America and some of his friends put up some money to start this company. Well, they went bankrupt but what people weren’t aware of at the time, was their lawyers reached an agreement with both energy and justice lawyer departments, that if they were to go bankrupt, during the bankrupt proceeding’s and the sale of the assets, that George Kaiser and his private investors would be the first to get money back and if there was anything left over it would go to the tax payers,” stated Whitfield. Unfortunately there was no money left over.

Whitfield also stated, “But the bottom line, is this administration has made a decision that they don’t want to use coal to produce electricity in America. It is so serious that EPA (Environmental Protective Agency) has proposed and have received comments on a regulation that will not allow another coal power plant be built in America. The reason it cannot be built, is there is not any technology available on the market that can meet the admission standards if you burn coal.”

In America today, coal provides 50% of our electricity. We are the only country in the world who cannot build a coal power plant. “But what makes this even worse, is that they are bringing a new administrator at the EPA and having discussions about making that regulation that is applicable to new plants, they want to make applicable for existing old power plants. So we are in a real struggle in America today about ensuring ourselves that we have abundant, affordable and reliable electricity and we can’t do it without coal,” expressed Whitfield.

He went on to say, “We are at a real crossroads and I just wanted to share this with you all to be aware. I want to ensure you that we are doing what we can. We have passed the bill twice on the house floor to overturn EPA regulations but we cannot get this to be brought up in the Senate House. But we are going to continue our efforts and hopefully we can do something, because we need coal to produce electricity.”